NMR diffusion measurements in complex mixtures using constant-time-HSQC-IDOSY and computer-optimized spectral aliasing for high resolution in the carbon dimension.

A new 3D pulse sequence for NMR diffusion measurements in complex mixtures is presented. It is based on the constant-time (CT) HSQC experiment and combines diffusion delay with the carbon evolution time. This combination has great potential to obtain high resolution in the carbon dimension. When using classical sampling of the carbon dimension, maximal resolution would require a large number of time increments, leading to unrealistically long acquisition times. The application of computer-optimized spectral aliasing allows one to reduce the number of time increments and the total acquisition time by 1-2 orders of magnitude by taking advantage of the information content of 1D carbon spectra, HSQC experiments, or both. With the new CT-HSQC-IDOSY experiment, the diffusion rates of the six anomers present in a 0.1 M D2O solution of glucose, maltose, and maltotriose could be obtained at natural abundance in 8 h with standard deviations below 5%.